The 8 Myths of Capitalism
Happy Jupiter day, my friends. In the spirit of the big gas giant, I want to pop some bubbles today surrounding capitalism’s take on Jovian mythologies.
Mythology and storytelling are some of the most powerful tools of humanity, because they allow us to process universal life experiences and develop meaning from the things that happen to us. The power of the myth is the personal relationship you have to the story being told, and how you locate the presence of myth in the world with your unique perspective. I’ve been exploring the concept of capitalism as a series of myths, or more accurately, a collection of myths that have been co-opted to suit capitalism’s aims.
Part of the reason capitalism feels harder to escape than gravity is due to the way it has attached itself to these fundamental stories that help us to contextualize and process humanity and life and death. Capitalism has co-opted myths that exist in the collective consciousness and claimed that they support its existence. Like a cancer, it has attached itself to the very thing we use to define humanity, in order to proliferate and consume its host—our planet.
The 8 Myths of Capitalism
The Myth of Progress - One of the most fundamental myths of capitalism, this myth claims that humanity is constantly progressing, moving toward time on a straight line forward. Time and land are both savage resources to be tamed in the name of progress. Technology is the tools of a people and progress is represented by advancements in technology.
The Myth of Control - This myth claims that each person is in control of their own destiny, and capitalism is a vehicle through which their destiny can be realized. Self-determination and a willingness to exploit your own labor are merits, as well as the ability to “control” one’s thoughts and emotions.
The Myth of Competition - This myth claims that competition is not only a beneficial thing for both humanity and progress, but a necessary thing. Endless growth and innovation, according to capitalism, cannot be produced without this “necessary” drive to have more than one’s neighbor. Trusting others is risky.
The Myth of Individuality - This is the myth of the hero, the lone protagonist who embarks on an adventure to realize their destiny. This myth says self-sufficiency and independence are traits to be valued above all others, and vulnerability must only be selectively shared. Competition against one’s own self is a virtue because it indicates a state of constant progress.
The Myth of Meritocracy - This is the myth that those who are the most deserving and hardworking will be the most materially rewarded under capitalism. This myth idolizes billionaire CEOs because making more money means you are more important and more powerful and possess more valuable insights than your fellow humans.
The Myth of Value - This myth states that everything, from physical objects to labor to ideas, can be assigned a monetary value and traded for currency. This is also called commodification. The myth of value, at its core, is about quantifying the impact of a human life.
The Myth of Scarcity - This is the myth that there are not enough resources on our planet to support humanity, and it supports the idea that competing for scarce resources—time and money, in modernity—is a natural and necessary part of human life. Sometimes this even goes as far as manufacturing false scarcity in the market in order to justify higher prices.
The Myth of Permanence - This is the myth that capitalism is the ultimate economic system, or even that late-stage capitalism signals our arrival at the “end of history”. This myth is present in every suggestion that there can be no viable alternative to capitalism.
What’s particularly insidious about these capitalist myths is that they can co-opt ancient human mythologies and other meaning-making devices, particularly in the case of astrology. The foundations of Anti-Capitalist Astrology are these myths and how each planet in modern astrology can be connected to one of them.
We understand planets and signs as celestial bodies and environments which they inhabit, thus providing a template onto which anyone can imprint their own ideologies and use the planetary cycles to justify their viewpoint. This isn’t always as malicious as it sounds—in fact, I believe if this system of meaning-making can be co-opted as a tool of capitalism, then it can be subverted to become a tool of liberation. Astrology is neutral; it’s all about how you use your tools.
You’ll have to join the course in order to learn about the planets as they connect to the rest of the myths, but I wanted to share about Jupiter and the myth of progress because Jupiter is the planet that is most commonly co-opted by capitalism. The myth of progress is also, uncoincidentally, the most foundational and insidious myth of capitalism.
Jupiter and The Myth of Progress
Judicial power is a future-making power, because it is also a civilizing power.
Alice Sparkly Kat, Postcolonial Astrology
In Roman mythology, Jupiter was granted by his mother the ability to decide right from wrong. This type of power granted through divinity, not necessarily through trial or conquest, can be used to examine the myths of white supremacy and manifest destiny. The ability to determine right from wrong is the foundation of civilization, and it is the savage, ‘natural’ world that must be tamed in order to secure a civilization. This includes the “internal savage,” sometimes referred to as a person’s “shadow,” or any kind of dark impulses that the myth of progress says each person must seek out and root out, in order to civilize oneself.1
Jupiter and the myth of progress are both about turning the wild into the ordered; the urge to contain the chaos Jupiter fears. In this way, we can see these myths represented in both the colonizers and the colonized: the colonizers who view the untamed world as a blank slate upon which to inscribe their imperialist “destiny,” and the indigenous peoples who inhabit these “empty” lands, described as animalistic and wild. Myths are explanations of universal truths, and thus can be witnessed on both sides of conflicts where it seems right and wrong couldn’t be more obvious. We don’t need to throw out the myth in order to throw out capitalism’s interpretation of it.
The story of Jupiter overthrowing his father, Saturn, is also inherent in the myth of progress as it’s seen as both a right and a rite of passage for the new generation to usurp the previous generations and surpass them, on both technological and intellectual levels. Capitalism’s endless growth doctrine (the same principle of a cancer cell) has usurped a myth that’s more about fathers and self-actualization and the circle of death and rebirth than anything else and turned it into a story of constant conquest: we must conquer the past through technology, we must conquer ourselves through self-improvement, we must conquer the earth through extracting its resources, and we must conquer the future through material security.
The snake sheds its skin just as the moon sheds its shadow.
Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
The snake gets a bad rap in a lot of Western culture due to Christian mythology, but in many other cultures, the snake is a good omen and a sign of rebirth, or shedding old notions of the past. Jupiter exalts in Cancer, the domain of the moon, because it is also a shapeshifter like the moon. Right and wrong are subjective, no matter who ultimately puts them into writing and turns them into law. While Jupiter is the planet that is most co-opted by astrology, it also has the most potential for subversion, and can be extremely effective in turning capitalism on its head—when it’s placed in containers that allow it to take the right shape.
Thank you for reading.
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